Last week, we noted that the terms of Disney-Pixar deal indicated the extent to which the impetus behind the buy-out was the bringing-into-the-Disney-fold of the key Pixar creatives who have been responsible for the company’s hugely profitable movies. In Slate today, Edward Jay Epstein takes a closer look at the numbers and determines that given the balance sheet of the deal, Disney is paying about $6 billion for the services of John Lasseter, et. al.

As Epstein notes, the rest of Hollywood is catching up with the technology behind Pixar’s huge hits (c.f. ‘Shrek’, etc.), and the next Pixar movie won’t be out until 2008. Will the deal pay off for Disney? Who knows. But it’s nice to see a studio banking so heavily on talent.